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Monday, July 11, 2011

I can name three surprising things about this clip of the 1980 film Can’t Stop the Music.

One: Seeing Bruce Jenner interacting with the Village People is weird, mostly because Jenner’s current claim to fame — being the man-captive held hostage by a coven of donkey-voice witches, Anthony from Designing Women-style — totally overshadows what made him famous in the first place.

Two: Bruce Jenner’s old face, before he suffered the catastrophic firebomb attack that resulted in him looking as he does today.

And three: This, apparently, passed for acceptable heterosexual streetwear at the end of the disco era. Seriously? Straight guys could wear halfshirts ever? How is Bruce Jenner dressed in a gayer manner than any one of the Village People?

I can also name two unsurprising things: First, this was Jenner’s only movie role ever. And second, MY GOD the stifling, pungent, dripping-from-the-walls gayness of everything that happens in the “Y.M.C.A.” sequence, which by comparison makes Bruce Jenner’s outfit look straighter than Sylvester Stallone shotgunning a beer whilst simultaneously shooting a lion and pissing on a fire.

A follow-up question: Is that example actually straight-seeming or is it, like the above clip itself, so stereotypically masculine that it goes beyond actual masculine and becomes gay again?

A second follow-up: How is it, again, that “Y.M.C.A.” became such a mainstream standard when it sounds so much like instructions for how to get easy casual sex in a locker room shower stall?